Ask-A-Linguist Message Details

Subject:

Why did some PIE people start using different words for 'give'?

Question:

In English and many other languages, we use the word ''to
give''. However, many other European languages use a form
of ''dar'' for ''give'', like Russian and the Romance languages.
Latin: dō
Italian: dare
Portuguese: dar
Romanian: da
Spanish: dar
French: donner
Old Church Slavonic: ''dan'''
Russian: ''dat'''
I see that the origin of the Latinate ''dare'' (to give) is *deh₃-
''to give'' in PIE.
I see the Proto-Indo-European etymology of ''give'' is gʰab(ʰ)
(“to grab, to take).
The Latinate/Romance descendant of gʰab(ʰ)is ''habere''
This seems to indicate that at some point the word ''to
grab/take'' became ''to give''! How the heck did this happen to
us Germanic PIE people?
If the Slavic/Romance PIE tribes maintained ''*deh₃- to give'',
why did Germanic PIE people lose *deh₃- and start using
gʰab(ʰ) differently?

Reply:

There's a LOT we don't know about the history of Indo-European and daughter
languages so it's hard to know exactly why and how some changes happen.
However, confusions in meeting is not uncommon. For instance "guard(ian)" and "ward"
also happen to come from the same root, but with a semantic shift for "ward" as
someone who needed to be guarded.